Ugandan president meets LRA rebel delegates in Juba

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has met the delegates of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudanese capital of Juba, in a bid to salvage the faltering peace talks aimed at ending one of Africa's longest conflicts, Sunday Monitor newspaper reported.

Museveni, amid tight security, arrived at Juba on Saturday to have the first face to face meeting with the LRA delegates after the LRA's two-decade insurgency, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, has left tens of thousands of people dead and over 1. 4 million people displaced in northern Uganda.

The 20-minute closed-door meeting at the National Assembly House where the southern Sudan Parliament is located was also attended by the southern Sudan President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar who has been mediating the talks.

"The problem of Kony is a confluence of the problems of Uganda and Sudan," Museveni said, adding that Kony was a product of Uganda 's gun politics and the chauvinism of the Sudanese leaders.

"..., in 2002, Khartoum decided to leave Kony alone. (President) Gen. (Omar) Bashir actually tried to promote the first dialogue between me and Kony. But Kony refused to listen to him," Museveni said.

Complaining of the lack of support from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the UN peacekeepers there, Museveni said that the government was prompted to pursue a peaceful solution to the conflict through talks.

The LRA has been hiding in the bush, northeast of the DR Congo, following their retreat from southern Sudan last year since the Ugandan army intensified the hunt-down operations assisted by the southern Sudanese military.

Museveni's visit, his first to Juba, came at a time that the talks were stalled as the LRA rebels launched a new wave of attacks on the Uganda People's Defense Force posted in southern Sudan and civilians near Juba.

The latest attacks last week have claimed the lives of at least 28 civilians and a UPDF captain and several vehicles were burnt in southern Sudan. TALKS IN DEADLOCK

A major dispute between the Ugandan government and the rebels was the indictment of the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against Kony and his four top aides.

Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and the late Raska Lukwiya were indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the court that insisted on their arrest.

The rebels want the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity dropped before signing a final peace deal, though Museveni has promised them a blanket amnesty based on the traditional symbolic justice system.

The two parties have failed to agree with each other on other issues that include power-sharing and integration of the rebel fighters into the national army.

"The talks have delayed because LRA have a lot of demands and their demands must be met before a comprehensive peace agreement is signed," the Observers and Monitoring Team's chairperson, Betty Amongi, said last week.

She said the LRA have 72 pages of demands, which they read at the talks and regularly telephone their leaders, Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti, over.

However, Amongi said there was no question about government's commitment to the talks.

"All the parties involved are committed to the peace talks. Our target is to ensure that the agreement is signed even if the talks take six months," Amongi said.

She said she would lead a delegation to meet officials of the ICC, where they would present video tapes recorded in northern Uganda, showing residents demanding that Kony and his commanders be forgiven.

Machar, the mediator at the peace talks, is still optimistic a deal will be reached by the end of this year. ORDER TO FIRE

The LRA's second-in-command Otti has ordered his fighters to shoot at the UPDF on sight following the ambush of a UPDF officer.

"I have consulted with my boss Joseph Kony and we have resolved that our forces should shoot at the UPDF as soon as they attempt to shoot at them and even see them (UPDF). I have told them to fight for their lives," Otti told Sunday Monitor.

"It's the UPDF who are now our target. If we come across them or their cars, we shall fight them. We are going to defend ourselves using our guns and bullets here, so we show them that we are still strong," he said by telephone.

He has also ordered his fighters not to return to Owiny-ki-Bul, one of the two designated assembly areas in southern Sudan for the LRA fighters as part of the terms of the peace process.

"But what I can tell you is that they are east of the banks of River Nile in southern Sudan only. They will not go to the assembly place," Otti said, refusing to identify the specific locations of his fighters.

The Ugandan military spokesperson Maj. Felix Kulayigye said Otti 's instructions to shoot at the UPDF is a violation of the truce they signed with government on Aug. 26.

"Whatever the LRA do as of now, we are not going to abandon the Juba peace process. We shall not go on the offensive against them. UPDF will continue to stay in its positions. However, our forces shall defend themselves when attacked," Kulayigye said.

Ending the war before next year's scheduled Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala would help redeem Uganda's image abroad.

A March 2006 report by a coalition of over 50 leading non- governmental organizations showed the devastating economic cost of the LRA's rebellion was estimated at 1.7 billion U.S. dollars, equivalent to the total U.S. aid to Uganda between 1994 and 2002. Museveni's visit to Juba, a move seen as the most confidence building act since the talks started on July 14, has anyway raised hopes of an end to the conflict which the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, described as "Africa's most forgotten war."

Source: Xinhua